


The Other Side of the Mirror

by lynna21



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Deathfic, M/M, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-23
Updated: 2017-06-23
Packaged: 2018-11-18 03:16:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11282670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lynna21/pseuds/lynna21
Summary: Everyone tried not to think of walkers as actual people.  Maybe they should.





	The Other Side of the Mirror

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this last night in one go. The alternate title would be Five Walkers Daryl Dixon Killed and One he Didn’t. Not beta'd, so I apologize for any mistakes. And I blame Skarlatha for all of it.

1

 

Leigh Campbell was twenty-five years old when the world came to an end.  

She spent her days at the college campus library, morosely shelving book after book, and looking wistfully at the expanse of bright blue sky that was visible through the massive floor to ceiling windows.  She told herself that it just wasn’t fair that she had to work there.  She should be out with her girlfriends, teasing someone special into buying her…  something.

When she thought about death at all, it was to imagine herself surrounded by children and grandchildren, passing away peacefully in her own bed.  She’d have to find a husband before she could acquire the children, of course, but she didn’t concern herself with that.  She was a Campbell, she was beautiful, and she was, best of all, rich.

Her death was much less glamourous than she’d imagined it would be.

She had been at the library when she heard screaming.  Thinking, naturally, that there was a shooter on campus, she immediately ran to the secluded staff only storage closet at the back of the library.

She was still there three hours later, and she was getting increasingly upset with every minute that passed.  It just wasn’t fair, she thought.  She was a Campbell!  They should save her before anyone else!

After four hours with no rescuer, she decided she’d rescue herself.  

Peeking out of the cracked door, she didn’t see anyone around, so she made her way up to the front of the library.  They’d probably caught whoever caused all those screams, and already arrested them.  Served them right, she thought, running a perfectly manicured hand through her long bottle-blonde hair.  Making her cower inside a _closet_ of all places.  There was dust, and who knew what else all over her pretty pink sweater!  She shouldn’t have to put up with things like that, she was a Campbell!

A moaning noise finally pulled her attention from the small pink compact she always carried around in her pocket.  You never knew when you’d need one after all.  She slipped the compact back into the pocket of her perfectly pleated black slacks, and turned around, ready to give whoever it was hell for keeping her waiting.

The only thought that had time to go through her somewhat empty head in the time it took for her to bleed out was, _This can’t be happening to me!  I’m a Campbell_!

Some hours later, Leigh Campbell started walking around the library again.  This time though, her lovely blue eyes were yellowed and dull, her pants were no longer perfectly pleated, and her pretty pink sweater was soaked in blood.  This confused her for a moment, and she briefly ate her own clothing before her brain sluggishly came to the conclusion that eating a sweater was not what she was craving.  So, she set off on a trek to find something else to satisfy herself.

In the months after the fall, Leigh wandered around the campus.  She managed to catch a stray cat once.  Only because the poor thing had somehow broken it’s leg, and couldn’t run away.  Cat, however, didn’t seem to be enough to satisfy.  Since she’d been walking around, she’d never been able to find anything that satisfied her illusive craving.  Something in her brain kept pushing her on though.  Ever, ever on.

On the morning of what would have been her twenty-sixth birthday, Leigh’s nose caught a new smell.  As she slowly walked towards what she knew was going to be just what she needed to sate her craving, a hank of her no longer bottle-blonde, matted and filthy hair got caught up in a chain link fence.  She didn’t let that stop her though.  She continued to walk, as best she could, in the direction of the smell.  And the noise.  There was noise now, along with the smell, and she could barely contain her hunger any longer.

A ripping sound dimly registered in her ears, and was accompanied by a feeling she couldn’t quite feel on the top of her head.

“Jesus, that’s fuckin’ nasty.”

More noise, and the smell was stronger.  Her struggles intensified.

“Lookit the way she’s trapped by her own fuckin’ hair.  She’s gonna fuckin scalp herself.”

“You gonna get it, or you want me to.”

“Naw.  I got plenty of bolts.  Bes’ not cause any racket.”

The smell, the noise, the smell, the noise, the smell, the smell, the sme-

 

2

 

Charles Marsh was twelve years old when the world came to an end.

He was a baseball player, and he and his father were in the local park, throwing a baseball around.

They were laughing and joking with each other when all of a sudden, what Charles thought was a homeless man, lurched out of the brush that ringed the park.

His father yelled, and tried to get the man to focus on him, but something about Charles had gotten his attention.  

Though his father yelled at him to run away, Charles had frozen in his spot when he saw the lurching man’s face clearly.  It looked eaten away.  Despite his best efforts, Charles’ feet seemed welded into the earth.  He felt his bladder let go when the man reached him, and bit down on his upraised arm.

Bellowing, his father charged the man, and when he, _it_ , was struggling to rise, his father grabbed him up and ran for the car.

Charles was crying, and scared, and in pain.  He wanted to go home.  He wanted his mother.

His father had been unable to get Charles to a hospital due to a massive pileup on the road leading there, so he’d taken his boy home.  On the way, they witnessed several people being eaten, and Charles screwed his eyes shut after the first one because he _wouldn’t_ see that!

Once his mother had exclaimed over his wound, and his father had explained what was happening out there, his mother’s face drained of all color.  His father tried to reassure her that they were going to be fine, but he was gathering up the hunting rifle and all the ammo in the house.  

His mother bundled him in thick blankets after he complained to her that he didn’t feel well.  She told him he had a fever.

At around three o’clock in the morning, Charles closed his eyes, and quietly died.  His parents wept.

At around seven o’clock in the morning, Charles opened his eyes again.

His parents, though he didn’t recognized them as such any more, were huddled together on the loveseat across from where he still lay on the couch.  Charles moved from the couch on stumbling feet, intent on getting to the enticing smell emanating from them.

He bit his mother first, directly on the sliver of throat she’d exposed in her sleep.  The smell was strong there.  She didn’t even have time to make any noise.  Only a small gurgling,  like the bubbling from a water cooler, sounded in the room.  Forced up from the back of what used to be her throat.  

His father didn’t stir, but he did make a loud noise, and Charles liked loud noises and he liked strong strong smells even more.  His father had a very strong smell, and Charles was hungry.

The first bite to his father was, unfortunately for him, not fatal.  Charles fell on him, snarling ravenously, and clawed and bit at every inch of flesh he could find.  

Charles’ father died while his son was chewing on his intestines.

After a time Charles, his mother, and his father were together again.  The wandered around their house, bumping into each other from time to time, and moaning quietly.

One day, when they were all just standing there, weak from lack of food, and _so hungry_ , there was a noise.

Charles, his mother, and his father liked noise.  

“Fuck, it’s a family of them.”

“Glenn, you get the woman.  Daryl, the man.  I’ll get-”

“No.  You get the guy.  I’ll get the other one.”

“Daryl-”

Charles was so close to the noise and the smell, he needed it, he was so hungry, and he was almost there.  

Charles heard one more noise, a click then a sort of swishing, and then he didn’t hear anything anymore.

 

3

 

Shelly Rogers was forty-two when the world came to an end.

She worked as a manager at a convenience store out in the country.  She was a happy woman, and she loved her job.  

The store was out of the way enough that the only customers she got were regulars, and they all loved her as much as she loved them.

Shelly went out of her way to help anyone she could.  She was one of the people who would have given the shirt off her own back if it would have helped someone.  She had actually done that once, in fact.  She took off her thick sweatshirt, the one with the cutest picture of a cat on it, and gave it to a homeless woman who lived out in the woods behind the store.  As she told the woman, it was winter, and it wouldn’t do for her to be going around without some kind of warm clothing.

The first time Shelly saw a walker, she instantly felt that something was not right.  When one of her regular customers came out of the forest and stabbed it right in the head, her feeling was proven right.

Her regular explained to her what was going on, and Shelly recalled all the news reports she’d seen just that morning, before she’d come into work.  She’d laughed it off at the time.  It was an over exaggeration, obviously.  Seemed like she was wrong.

Not having anyone to go home to, Shelly stayed at the store.  After a few days, there were nearly twenty people there with her.  All her regular customers.

Slowly, though, one by one, they started dying.

Shelly was eventually left all alone, holed up in the back of her store with a gun, and a bite on her calf.  

She planned on ending it all, but, still looking out for others even in the end, she wanted to gather just a few more supplies.  There had to be other people out there, and if she could, Shelly wanted to help them.  She was sure that at some point there would be people making their way out here to the boondocks, and wouldn’t a whole back room full of supplies be a nice surprise?

Unfortunately for Shelly, who had been determined to never become one of those biters, she overestimated herself.  As she slid down the wall next to where the cash register was, and lamented the fact that her gun was still in the back room, she used the last of her strength to write a note and pin it to the front of her store smock with the nametag she still wore.

Her eyes fell shut, and her breathing stopped as twilight fell over the world outside the glass door of her store.

Before it was full dark, Shelly’s eyes were open once again, and she was looking for food.  She wandered the store back and forth, over and over, weakening more and more every day.

Because the store was relatively small, and quite a bit off the beaten path, it was nearly a year before Shelly heard any noise that she hadn’t caused herself.  It had been months since her legs had given out and she’d done nothing but sit where she fell, her blank eyes staring at nothing.

When the noise came, she weakly turned her head towards it, and reached out.  She wanted it.  She had to have that smell, at all costs.

“S’that a suicide note?”

“Don’t know.  Let’s just do this and get out.  There probably isn’t anything here.”

The smells were coming closer, Shelly wanted them.  Needed them.  

There was a bright flash of something shiny, and then Shelly was gone.

Her last thoughts were of hunger.

She didn’t see herself slumping to the side, or the man with the hunting knife pulling the pinned note off her chest, reading it, and shoving it at the other man with a grin of triumph.

She didn’t see the knife wielding man kneel down by her side, and she didn’t hear his whispered, “Thank you, Shelly.”

 

4

 

Ezra Gould was ninety-one when the world came to an end.

He was sitting on his bed in the assisted living facility when he heard the nurses start screaming.

Ezra was afraid of nothing.  After facing down Nazi’s in occupied Europe, what was left to be frightened of?  He moved off his bed, and used his cane to move over to the doors and look out into the corridor.

His favorite nurse was lying on the floor in the middle of the hallway, blood pooling underneath her, and several of his fellow residents looked to be _eating_ her.

Quietly shutting his door, Ezra exercised his still sharp military mind, and tried to assess the situation.  People were eating people.  Were they cannibals?  Were they sick?  What could he do to make sure he was safe?  Could he make sure anyone else was safe?  

He answered his last question with a regretful, no.  If anyone needing help came near his room, he’d do all he could, but he was pragmatic enough to know that in a life or death situation he was more of a hinderance than a help.  

As his deceased wife, who he’d met in France during the war and loved more deeply than he’d thought was possible, would have said, C’est la vie.

Ezra calmly locked his door, and lay down on his bed, wondering how long it would take before whatever was eating his former friends would come for him.

As it turned out, no one ever did come for Ezra.  He lived on in his small room for several more weeks until he had a massive stroke.  He crumpled into a heap beside his cane, a hand still clutching the framed picture of his beloved wife.

It took nearly fourteen hours before Ezra’s eyes opened again.  If he’d been able to tell you, he probably would have said it took so long because he was so damn stubborn.  He’d liked saying that.  

Turning seemed to have given him some more kick than he’d had before.  He roamed constantly around his small room, knocking over knick-knacks, and tromping all over the picture of his late wife.

He just happened to be directly behind his door one day when it was kicked open.  His hands flailed and he was the proud owner of a brand new crossbow bolt before he hit the floor.

 

5

 

Antonia Hodge was fifty-nine when the world came to an end.

She was a plump woman, with generous hips, and an ample bosom.  The size of said bosom was only matched by the size of her heart.

Toni, as she prefered to be called, was a schoolteacher.  She’d known since she was a small girl that teaching children was her calling.  She seemed to have a natural gift with even the most troubled kids, and she was like a surrogate mother to all of them.   _Especially_ the troubled ones.

Since she taught in a poorer area, she always had food on hand for children that were going without.  Toni had to get special permission from the principal of the school for the small refrigerator and pantry that she kept in her classroom, but it was worth it.  Every smile that shone up at her, and every hug and kiss she received, made her benevolent heart happy.

When she’d headed to school for the last time, her mind was preoccupied with all the images she’d seen on the news.  So preoccupied, in fact, that she never saw the man walk out in front of her car.

She slammed her brakes after she hit him, but it was too late, and she was sure she’d killed him.

Fretfully, she unbuckled her seatbelt, and got out of the car.  The man was still alive!  He was moaning terribly, and reaching his hands out like he wanted to grab onto Toni.  She decided to try to calm him down, and that’s when it happened.

She’d only wanted to comfort the grievously wounded man, so she reached out to take his hand.  With unnatural strength, she was jerked forward, and less than thirty seconds later she was gone.

Less than thirty seconds after that, she was back.  

Now, since Toni was outside, from the second her freshly animated eyes opened, she was moving.  Searching, looking for the smell, listening for the noise.  Toni was especially hungry, and she loved it when she came upon the noisy, smelly things because they meant food.  

Food was the most important thing in Toni’s world.

She was wandering through the woods one day, hundreds of miles from the scene of her death, still mostly sated from a noisy, smelly thing she’d found the day before when she heard a noise and smelled a smell.

She turned and stumbled in the direction of the noise.  Her legs were uncoordinated, and she didn’t notice the log because she was too focused on _smellsmellsmell foodfoodfood_.  Toni fell directly onto the source of the smell, and opened her mouth, biting deeply.  She relished the warm gush of blood in her mouth as much as her wasted brain would allow, and groaned around the flesh her teeth were still clamped onto.

Her journey across the world looking for food was ended when a lean man holding a crossbow let out an anguished cry of, “Rick!” and shot a bolt through her skull.

 

+1

 

Rick Grimes was thirty-five when the world came to an end.

He was a sheriff's deputy, and he had a wife and a young son.

When the dead started walking, he was in a coma, and by some miraculous turn of events, he managed to reunite with the family he’d been all but positive was lost.

In the years since, he’d killed plenty of walkers.  People, too.  He’d lost more people that he considered family than it was possible to lose, and still be completely sane.  The man he’d been before the turn was not the same one that came to be in the after.

He lost a wife, brothers, sisters, fathers.

In the midst of all the loss, when his mind was so clouded with hurt, and anger, and grief he could barely see, he’d also found something.

He found a brother, a friend, a confidant, a partner, a lover.  He’d found the other piece of his soul that he had been too broken to even known he was missing.

The day he died was a normal day.  

He was checking the snares with his other half, and somehow they stopped worrying about whatever they may have caught, and began focusing on each other.

They both knew better, but things happen, and a man with love on his mind isn’t necessarily in possession of all his faculties.

If he could have, he would have told his lover, his life, that it didn’t hurt.  It felt more empty than anything else.  Like he was a glass of water that was slowly being poured down a drain.  Rick was sorry that he would never get to see his children again, but also glad that they wouldn’t be here to see his end.  They didn’t need to live with that inside their minds.  His eyes grew dim quickly, but there was still something like a corona glowing in the middle of his vision.  In the middle of that corona was the living personification of Rick’s happiness.   _Daryl_.  Rick wanted to tell him how much he was loved, but he couldn’t seem to make his mouth work.

Instead, he lifted a trembling hand, and placed it on Daryl’s cheek, hoping with every fiber of his being that the man who knelt in front of him understood what he was trying to say.

“I l-l-love you, too, Rick.” Daryl said, his breath hitching as he pressed kisses to every inch of Rick’s face.  “Love you, love you, love you.”

Rick smiled.  It was a good day to die.  The sun was shining on the leaves, and the breeze that Rick couldn’t quite feel anymore had been wonderful.

Rick closed his eyes.  His glass of water was nearly empty.  The last thought he had before he slipped away was about how soft his Daryl’s lips were, and how, if he tried hard enough, maybe he could hang on for one last kiss.

When Rick’s fingers began to twitch exactly six hours, twenty-one minutes, and thirty-four seconds later, he wasn’t alone.

He couldn’t move, and there was a smell he desperately wanted.  Struggling against whatever held him immobile, Rick growled and snarled, and it was echoed somewhere off to his right, but that didn’t matter, _foodfoodfood._ It was right there, coming through the trees.

“We found them like this.  We think your dad got bit.  And Daryl-”

“I can figure it out.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah,” Carl said, as he looked at his handgun, a tear sliding slowly down his cheek.

“Do you want me to-"  
  
“No.  Can I have a minute please?”

Michonne nodded, and moved into the trees, away from the clearing where they’d found Rick and Daryl.  Wiping at her tear-streaked face, she waited.

Several minutes later, when two gunshots echoed through the woods, shattering the silence, she told herself that everything would be okay.

Maybe if she kept repeating that, one day she’d actually believe it.


End file.
